1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to vehicle-installed obstacle detecting system and method, and more particularly to vehicle-installed obstacle detecting system and method for detecting obstacles in surroundings of the vehicle through pattern matching.
2. Description of the Related Art
Vehicle-installed obstacle detecting systems have been proposed which are arranged to detect pedestrians through pattern matching. For example, a moving object detecting system as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-99997 (JP-A-2002-99997) specifies a road region based on image information received from a CCD camera, and combines the road region information with infrared image information received from an infrared camera so as to search for and specify a pedestrian or pedestrians within the road region through template matching. Thus, the moving object detecting system detects a pedestrian on a screen within the required minimum search range, assuring enhanced speed of processing for specifying the pedestrian.
With the above-described technology, however, detection of a pedestrian having a high possibility of colliding with the vehicle after a short time may be delayed depending on the circumstances.